Introduction to Databases (Stanford)

This course covers database design and the use of database management systems for applications.

It includes extensive coverage of the relational model, relational algebra, and SQL. It also covers XML data including DTDs and XML Schema for validation, and the query and transformation languages XPath, XQuery, and XSLT.

The course includes database design in UML, and relational design principles based on dependencies and normal forms. Many additional key database topics from the design and application-building perspective are also covered: indexes, views, transactions, authorization, integrity constraints, triggers, on-line analytical processing (OLAP), JSON, and emerging NoSQL systems. Working through the entire course provides comprehensive coverage of the field, but most of the topics are also well-suited for “a la carte” learning.

Databases are incredibly prevalent — they underlie technology used by most people every day if not every hour. Databases reside behind a huge fraction of websites; they’re a crucial component of telecommunications systems, banking systems, video games, and just about any other software system or electronic device that maintains some amount of persistent information. In addition to persistence, database systems provide a number of other properties that make them exceptionally useful and convenient: reliability, efficiency, scalability, concurrency control, data abstractions, and high-level query languages. Databases are so ubiquitous and important that computer science graduates frequently cite their database class as the one most useful to them in their industry or graduate-school careers.

“Databases” was one of Stanford’s three inaugural massive open online courses in the fall of 2011; it was offered again in MOOC format in 2013 and 2014.

Course Topics:

1: Introduction

2: Relational Model

3: Querying Relational Databases

4: Well Formed XML

5: DTDs IDs IDREFs

6: XML Schema

7: JSON Intro

8: JSON Demo

9: Relational Algebra 1

10: Relational Algebra 2

11: Introduction to SQL